‘Iron Man 3′ news: main villain revealed, Iron Patriot armor spotted.

Despite the fact that Iron Man 3 is currently filming in Wilmington, North Carolina, there are still plenty of questions surrounding the film’s plot, including which villains may (or may not) be involved. We know Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale, and Ashley Hamilton are all attached, and now Latino Review claims to have the scoop on how the hierarchy will be laid out.

The site reports that “The Mandarin is played by Ben Kingsley and [is]a villain in the movie despite Marvel’s continued insistence that he’s not,” which should come as no surprise. Latino Review was also the first site to break the new that Loki would be the primary villain in The Avengers, which prompted similar denials from the studio but ultimately turned out to be true.

The report also claims that The Mandarin is “more a veiled threat as a silent partner to Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian,” who invents the Extremis technology and begins establishing an army of “multiple super-powered individuals.” This certainly sounds like Killian will be the primary villain in the film, and the claim that he is putting together an “Extremis army” goes hand-in-hand with these first spy photos from the set of Iron Man 3.

The Superficial snapped these photos of James Badge Dale on the set of Iron Man 3, and fans of the comic books will recognize the Iron Patriot armor, introduced by Norman Osborn in 2009’s Dark Avengers #1. Obviously we won’t be seeing Osborn in the film, as Sony still holds the rights to the character as part of the larger Spider-Man universe, but seeing Dale in the suit should certainly spark some discussion, especially when we know that Dale’s character eventually becomes the villain Coldblood in the comics.